Ah, shades of Amazon.
From TechCrunch, April 10:
Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience, was charged with defrauding investors on Wednesday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising a $38 million Series A in 2021 led by Renegade Partners.
Nate said its app’s users could buy from any e-commerce site with a single click, thanks to AI. In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ’s Southern District of New York alleges.
Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online “without human intervention,” except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app’s actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.
Nate’s heavy usage of human contractors was the subject of an investigation by The Information in 2022.
Saniger didn’t respond to a request for comment. He is currently listed as a managing partner at New York VC Buttercore Partners, which didn’t respond to a request for comment either.
The DOJ’s indictment says that Nate ran out of money and was forced to sell its assets in January 2023, leaving its investors with “near total” losses....
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Can This Be True?: Amazon's 'Just Walk Out' Stores Relied On 1000 People In India Watching What You Put In Your Cart (AMZN)
From The Hindustan Times, April 3:
1000 Indians part of Amazon's “generative AI” driven Just Walk Out project in Fresh stores: Report
What was billed a self-checkout system powered by cameras and censors, giving the illusion of an automated system turned out to be a little different…
Amazon is phasing out its Just Walk Out tech from all of its Fresh grocery stores in the US, according to a report in The Information. It would appear that what was billed as an AI endeavour included thousands of Indians adding items to carts and charging the customers depending on what objects they walked out with.
Just Walk Out was billed a self-checkout system powered by cameras and censors, giving the illusion of an automated system.
Amazon had claimed: “The feat is a combination of computer vision, object recognition, advanced sensors, deep machine learning models, and generative AI—a type of artificial intelligence that has recently captured the public’s imagination.”
Jon Jenkins, vice president of Just Walk Out technology had said: “Our tech is able to distinguish shoppers from one another, without collecting or using any of their biometric information. Just Walk Out technology detects when a shopper’s hand interacts with a product on the shelf. When that happens, machine learning algorithms make sure the correct item is added to the virtual cart—all without any specific knowledge about the person.”
The truth however is a little less exciting....
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Yes, sadly it is all too true.
Previously (2018):
